Names and faces

By The Associated Press

Posted: August 4, 2014 at 3:27 a.m.

Credit: Charles Sykes/Invision/AP
Chris Pratt attends a screening of "Guardians of the Galaxy" hosted by The Cinema Society and Men's Fitness on Tuesday, July 29, 2014, in New York. (Photo by Charles Sykes/Invision/AP)

• Guardians of the Galaxy blasted past expectations at the weekend box office. Marvel Studios' cosmic romp starring Chris Pratt and Zoe Saldana as members of an intergalactic band of rebels earned $94 million in its debut weekend, according to studio estimates Sunday. Ahead of its Friday debut, box office analysts initially projected that the comic book adaptation would earn between $60 million and $75 million in North America. The launch gives Guardians the biggest opening for an August film, a record previously held by the $69.2 million debut of 2007's The Bourne Ultimatum. It also makes Guardians the third-largest opening of 2014, behind the $95 million inauguration of Captain America: The Winter Soldier and the $100 million launch of Transformers: Age of Extinction. Guardians also features Bradley Cooper and Vin Diesel voicing the computer-generated characters Rocket Raccoon and Groot. The movie originally was considered a risky proposition for Marvel and Guardians distributor Walt Disney Co. because it features more obscure characters from the Marvel universe and is set almost entirely in outer space. Marvel's next films are the follow-up The Avengers: Age of Ultron and Ant-Man, starring Paul Rudd. Both movies are coming in 2015. In a distant second place, Lucy, starring Scarlett Johansson as a woman with mind-bending powers, nabbed $18.3 million in its second weekend, bringing the Universal Pictures release's domestic total to $80 million. Meanwhile, Universal's James Brown biopic Get on Up featuring Chadwick Boseman as the soulful singer opened in third place with $14 million.

• Curb Your Enthusiasm actress Cheryl Hines and Robert Kennedy Jr. are now married. The couple wed Saturday before family and friends gathered at the Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port, Mass., on Cape Cod. The 60-year-old Kennedy is an environmental lawyer and activist who lives in New York. He is son of the late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and nephew of President John F. Kennedy and the late Sen. Edward Kennedy. It is his third marriage. The 48-year-old Hines has been nominated twice for Emmys for her role playing Larry David's wife on HBO's Curb Your Enthusiasm.